


Four Seasons That Never Happened to Albus Dumbledore

by Delphi



Category: Harry Potter - Rowling
Genre: Child Abuse, Childhood, Dark, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2005-09-15
Updated: 2005-09-15
Packaged: 2017-10-05 15:25:32
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,050
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/43157
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Delphi/pseuds/Delphi
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A look at what might have been inside the emerald potion in <i>Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince</i>.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Four Seasons That Never Happened to Albus Dumbledore

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Petulantgod](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=Petulantgod).



> Written for the 2005 Sweets Addiction exchange on LJ.

There are things he remembers.

_"I don't want...Don't make me..."_

Bare feet on the naked floorboards. A sparrow on the windowsill. The gentle click and scratch of hard chalk, incomprehensible symbols in an incomprehensible hand.

There's bread in the oven downstairs, and the sound of pacing feet and the clink of the whisk in the mixing bowl waft up on the warm scent of it. He's hungry and restless as he huddles on the floor with the other children, learning of Moses and Aaron and the wicked Pharaoh, while outside a bright springtime Sunday afternoon slips by without them.

A splinter makes blond-haired Maggie bleed when she crowds him; her whimper earns her a glare from Teacher, which gives him juvenile satisfaction. The man is important. He only comes on Sundays, and reads out of his big black book, and has a plate piled high with seconds and thirds when he stays for dinner.

The man is important, so he feels important too, the first time he's asked to stay after everyone else files out down to their chores. The others will be jealous. The big book is laid aside, and so is the little chalkboard. He is crowded, but he hesitates, silent. And then it is too late.

* * *

_"...don't like...want to stop..."_

Winter. He is older now, but not by much. Most importantly, the marks on the chalkboard now have meaning to him. Ay, bee, cee, dee, ee, eff, gee...

Pharisee sounds like it should be a letter, but it isn't.

The older children make grubby pencil-stub marks in their primers, but he twirls his idly between his fingers, imagining that it is something soft and cool. A snake. He imagines it slithering between his fingers like the little ones out in the garden who whisper to him.

Teacher's voice drones on like insects, flies, like the sort the little snakes eat. They told him so.

He looks out the window at the falling snow and shivers. The ground is a dirty grey, slushed by boots in ugly overlapping patterns that swallow up the snowflakes the moment they hit bottom.

The other children get their knuckles rapped with a ruler when they lollygag, but he never does. His hands are smooth and pale-pink and so is the whole of his body. Not like the man, who is coarse and red and thick, and hairy like a mammal. Mammals, insects, fish, and fowl. He knows those too. And reptiles.

He doesn't always daydream.

* * *

_"I don't want to...I don't want to...Let me go..."_

He wants to be the snake in the story. The clever one who showed the fruit to the woman and man and made them stop being stupid.

It's summer, and Teacher is back in the city while they take their holiday out by the seashore. There are no Sunday lessons, so he decides to make one of his own. He leads one boy and one girl away from the beach, and he tells them the story of the garden.

It's dark in the caves, and sweetly cool. He likes the way the world falls silent save for the lonely drops of water deep inside. The girl cries, which annoys him, because Eve isn't supposed to know sorrow yet, so he makes her stop. They try to run away, but he tells them to stay, and their feet stick to the ground.

He supposes it shouldn't surprise him when he takes off their clothing and sees that they're as smooth as he is. He's seen them bathed in the big cast-iron tub in the kitchen, scrubbed raw with ugly-smelling soap and the pig-bristle brush. But it worries him nonetheless for a moment.

Then he decides that they're fish. And everything's all right.

* * *

_"Make it stop, make it stop."_

Teacher is ill in autumn. He tells no one that it's because he's wished it, because they would put him in the madhouse like the girl who had fits. It makes the man rougher, because he knows that _he_ never gets ill. Not even a cold. Teacher knows he will be stronger one day, and eat him like a snake eats mice.

For now, he slips downstairs afterwards, and bathes himself in the basin, and washes the mess away. 'Girls bleed,' two older boys whisper in the hallway as he passes, bent over a tattered pamphlet in the alcove. He makes note of this and quietly supposes that it's mammals who do it to them.

He hurts all the time now. His bones growing. The bruises on his wrists and throat that he makes go away, but that lurk sullenly beneath his skin for all the days past Sunday.

But he takes seconds at dinner like the man does, now, whispering to the other children that they aren't hungry any more. He makes the dreams go away, and he sleeps the whole night through. He's getting stronger every day, and he knows he makes the stupid ones afraid.

He bides his time.

* * *

_"No, no, no, no, I can't, I can't, don't make me, I don't want to..."_

Albus Dumbledore sits alone in front of the hearth in the evening, a cup of tea steaming in the clutch of his good hand. Neither warms him as he sits still and silent, with Fawkes roosting peaceably beside him and his thoughts full of things that are not his to know.

The memories leave a foul taste in his mouth and a sickness in his heart. And he thinks: Tom Marvolo Riddle may never have loved another human being in all his life, but he himself can only hope that he brings no harm to the world by loving him just a little.

He closes his eyes, sleep teasing him from the edges of consciousness, so sweet in these last days. In the back of his mind, he can hear the echo of a cave, or perhaps it's the drip of memory into a pensieve. He is the caretaker of these thoughts, of an entire childhood distilled into virulent poison that he wilfully took into himself. He will keep them safe, as he did not keep the boy. This he promises, even as the memories swirl between his ears like emerald serpents and slowly tarnish every trace of silver away.


End file.
